Irish draw inspiration from new Kidd on the block

Paul Trow talks to the Kiwi coach with a mission to play running rugby

BAPTISMS do not come any tougher than Murray Kidd's first brush with rugby at the highest level. As a slightly built 17-year-old New Zealander who "weighed 11 stone wringing wet", he was picked on the wing for Taranaki against the 1971 British Lions.

Despite being on the receiving end of a 14-9 defeat, he cherishes the experience as one of his proudest memories because he had to mark David Duckham, by common consent the most dashing wing of his day.

Kidd modestly regards his confrontation with the charismatic Englishman as a draw. "He was a big man - at least 14 stone - and I was absolutely petrified," he recalled. "But I had a reasonable amount of speed and I got up to him as fast as I could so that whenever he got the ball he got me at the same time."

Fast-forward a quarter of a century, and Kidd, recently appointed for a year as the Ireland team's first professional coach, prepares for the Five Nations' Championship with his side's hopes more buoyant than usual following last month's 44-8 victory over a Fiji team which had run Wales embarrassingly close in Cardiff the previous weekend.

Those preparations begin in earnest today when he shepherds a 30-strong squad to Atlanta, venue for next summer's Olympics and, more immediately, Saturday's international against the United States.

Despite his propitious display against Duckham all those years ago, Kidd, now 42, was a centre for most of his playing career and a good enough performer to become an All Black triallist. But with such gifted rivals as Bruce Robertson, he never did pull on the All Black jersey. None the less, he played 13 seasons at district level in New Zealand, first for Taranaki, then for Manawatu and finally for King Country.

It was with King Country that he returned to coaching in his native land last year. But it all came as a bit of a shock, and he fell out of favour. "The results were not too bad, but I encountered problems I had not anticipated with the players. They weren't prepared to work as hard as I felt they should, which was really surprising for a New Zealand team. Their game had not advanced at all in 10 years and, even though I was 40, I was fitter than most of them in training," said Kidd, who returned to Cork this year with his wife, Heather, a rugby journalist, and sons Sam (a 16-year-old centre) and Ben (a 15-year-old prop), schoolboys at the rugby-famous Christian Brothers College.

His relationship with Irish rugby began when he answered an advertisement to coach Garryowen. The Limerick club could not accommodate him on that occasion, but they made fresh contact just before the 1990 Commonwealth Games in Auckland, in which he was involved as an events and sports marketing specialist. "After the Games I came over and started with Garryowen at the outset of the All Ireland League," he said.

When Garryowen won the League in 1992, Irish rugby began to sit up and take note. The Munster Cup was won the following season, after which Kidd joined the Cork side Sunday's Well, who swiftly rose from the Third to the First Division under his tutelage and also lifted the Munster Cup.

All those years after his confrontation with the Lions, Kidd now finds himself charged with bringing the best out of the modern game's answer to Duckham. Blond, brilliant and burly (like Duckham), Simon Geoghegan is a hero to Ireland's fanatical rugby public. And after only two months of working with the Bath wing, Kidd is inclined to agree, rating him even higher than his gargantuan countryman Jonah Lomu.

"Simon must have the best strike record of any wing in the world, including Lomu," Kidd said. "No one turns passes into more tries than Simon. I think he averages something like a try for every two passes he receives while playing for Ireland." So it is no surprise that getting more ball to Geoghegan (a problem England never solved with Duckham) is high on Kidd's list of priorities.

The willingness of his Ireland squad to train and work hard is not in doubt. "They need to increase their fitness levels, that's true, but the programmes are in place and I don't see that as my specific area of responsibility. I will have to monitor it all and only pick players who are fit, but I have shortened their training time dramatically. They work twice as hard in half the time.

"Overall, a lack of strength in depth is an ongoing problem for Irish rugby. We don't have as many players as England, so we have to play the game our players allow us to play while England can decide on their pattern of play and then pick the players to fit in with it. New Zealand also has a small population, but there aren't the distractions of Gaelic football or soccer over there.

"I want to concentrate on skills so that a definite pattern of play will emerge and we can use the ball more effectively than in the past," he continued. "I want to involve all 15 players as far as possible, but that doesn't mean we will throw the ball around willy-nilly."

But Ireland's rivals should beware - it could mean considerably more than just two touches a game for Geoghegan.